Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Harness the Power of High Performance Computing

We invite you to attend this exclusive deep dive on technology that is used to solve computationally intensive problems. Learn how High Performance Computing with Windows^® Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS) can create and enable a faster time to insight when executing computational or data-intensive applications.

CCS represents a significant step forward in reducing the barriers to deployment for organizations and individuals who want to take advantage of the power of a HPC solution.

With CCS, customers gain an out-of-the-box deployment experience, an integrated software stack to simplify setup and support from leading HPC applications in a range of industries.

Join us to learn more about how to take advantage of the benefits of deploying a simplified and integrated HPC infrastructure.

Topics to be covered:
§ Overview of Windows CCS 2003
§ Compute Cluster Pack Installation
§ Automated Deployment
§ Cluster Validation
§ Cluster management
§ Job Submission and Management

LOCATION:
Irvine, CA
February 7 and 8th, 2008
Microsoft – Orange County
3 Park Plaza, Suite 1800
Irvine California 92614

Cost $299. US

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032363346&Culture=en-US
or call 1-877-673-8368 and reference event code 1032363346

<taken from http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=758 >

The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5).   But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I’ve compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista and placed them side by side.  This is significant because it shows a trend that can give us a good estimate for how many flaws we can expect to find in the coming months.  The more monthly flaws there are in the historical trend, the more likely it is that someone will find a hole to exploit in the future.  For example back in April of this year, hackers took over a fully patched Macbook and won $10,000 plus the Macbook they hacked.

I used vulnerability statistics from an impartial third party vendor Secunia and I broke them down by Windows XP flaws, Vista flaws, and Mac OS X flaws.  Since Secunia doesn’t offer individual numbers for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.4, I merged the XP and Vista vulnerabilities so that we can compare Vista + XP flaws to Mac OS X.  In case you’re wondering how 19 plus 12 could equal 23, this is because there are many overlapping flaws that is shared between XP and Vista so those don’t get counted twice just as I don’t count something that affects Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 twice.

Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007

                                XP     Vista    XP+Vista     MacOSX
Total extremely critical         3         1           4          0
Total highly critical           19        12          23        234
Total moderately critical        2         1           3          2
Total less critical              3         1           4          7
Total flaws                     34        20          44        243
Average flaws per month       2.83      1.67        3.67      20.25

X Extremely critical
H Highly critical
M Moderately critical
L Less critical

So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious.  Clearly this goes against conventional wisdom because the numbers show just the opposite and it isn’t even close.

Taken from Wired:

The big conundrum this holiday season? It’s not how to escape your in-laws. (You’re trapped, fool!) It’s which media player to buy that special someone. The initial knee jerk reaction is to buy the 80GB iPod Classic. Not so fast, there hotshot. There’s also the brand new 80GB Zune 2, which is actually your better bet. The kids are getting a Zune for Christmas, even if they asked Santa for an iPod.

I can honestly say that especially with the new Zune software, I’m lovin’ my Zune.  Both my old Zune 30 and my new Zune 8GB Flash.  iPod begone.  The bigger screen on the original Zune and the Zune 80 is great for all the ripped DVDs I have encoded in 256MB Zune-only WMV format.  (320 full length motion picture movies in a single unit, baby!  Yeah!)

Meanwhile, the 8GB is great for working out being that it’s not just got a nice viewable color screen and it’s flash-based so it’s droppable, but also it’s got an FM tuner for looking at the TV sets in the cardio area of the gym that are tuned to weird frequencies like 88.1FM and 93.3FM.

LINK:  http://www.wired.com/gadgets/portablemusic/news/2007/12/megaplayer_smackdown

For people with original Zune 30 and new Zune 80 devices, there is a new 2.3 (1145) firmware update available (Go to the desktop software and go to Settings –> Device –> Device Update) that fixes a battery power leak. The problem occurs when users suspend their Zune hard drives by holding down the play/pause button – in some cases the battery continues to drain.

For all Zune users, the firmware update will also improve device recognition as well as stability and reliability during syncing both wirelessly and while connected to a PC.

(Taken from: http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2007/12/18/firmware-update-2-3.aspx)

On December 19th, Blockbuster will premiere the first full-length feature film, Jackass 2.5, directly to online audiences on Windows and Mac using Microsoft Silverlight.  Jackass 2.5 will be made available for free, for anyone in the US 17 or older, courtesy of Blockbuster at www.blockbuster.jackassworld.com beginning December 19th through December 31st, 2007.

This is one of the largest projects in Blockbuster history, made possible using the rich media CDN from Limelight Networks and Silverlight.  Silverlight is a 1.5MB cross-browser, cross-platform plugin for IE, Firefox and Safari users.  Details and download at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

Incidentally, this marks a transformational shift in how users are choosing to consume their media today and in the near future, a trend that Microsoft is paying attention to and enabling with Silverlight.  The ecosystem around Silverlight is continuing to grow, with an impressive line-up of customers like MLB.com, BMW, Sony Ericsson, Baidu (#1 search site in PRC), NBA.com, Entertainment Tonight (CBS/Paramount) and UVNTV.com, to name a few.  See more at http://silverlight.net/Showcase/

WEBCAST:  Prepare Yourself for Windows Server 2008 (Part 8 of 8): Rights Management Services (Level 400)  December 19, 2007 8:00 AM

Information Rights Management (IRM) is a growing concern for all sorts of organizations, and we outline common IRM needs and scenarios in this webcast.

We first look at the new features of Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS), and we explore the previous version of Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS), in addition to the two service packs issued for it.

We explain how to employ RMS with RMS-enabled applications, such as Microsoft Office Word documents, Microsoft Office Outlook e-mail messages, and a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server library. Finally, we describe how to extend the reach of IRM to users outside of your own Active Directory forest.

REGISTER:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032359953&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

It’s a New Year. Save Time. Get Focused. Achieve balance.

Join us in this free informative seminar on time management presented by Dale Carnegie Training and Microsoft Corporation.

Get Focused. Get Results.– presented by Dale Carnegie Training
Discover time wasters, stress producers and other time management inhibitors. Learn how to handle demands on your time. Identify tools to plan, organize, and manage your time.

Everyday Productivity Tips Using Microsoft Office – presented by Microsoft
Get more out of the tools you use every day. In this informative session, you’ll learn timesavers and tips to help you deliver better results faster, get more out of your information, and work more effectively with others.

REGISTER TODAY!

TIME/DATE:
Irvine  – January 30, 2008
7:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

LOCATION:
The Westin South Coast Plaza
686 Anton Boulevard
Costa Mesa, California  92626
Free seminar
Breakfast and Self-parking included

AGENDA
7:30 – 8:00 | Check-In & Breakfast
8:00 – 10:00 | “Get Focused. Get Results.” – Dale Carnegie Training
10:00 – 11:30 | Everyday Productivity Tips Using Microsoft Office

About Dale Carnegie Training
Founded in 1912, Dale Carnegie Training has evolved from one man’s belief in the power of self-improvement to a performance-based training company with offices worldwide. We focus on giving people in business the opportunity to sharpen their skills and improve their performance in order to build positive, steady, and profitable results.

You are one of the unsung heroes of technology. The work you do every day helps your company to be more competitive, and now Microsoft launches three powerful new products to make it even easier for you to be a hero every day.

Three ways to be a hero.
One event to launch them.

See the applications in action. Attend break-out sessions and meet with product experts. Have Q&A sessions with development teams. And leave with a promotional kit that includes versions of the Windows Server® 2008 operating system, Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008, and Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008.

Register for your launch event today.

LOS ANGELES LAUNCH:
Wednesday, February 27, 9:00am to 5:00pm
Registration begins at 7:00 AM in front of the Nokia Theatre

Nokia Theater
777 Chick Hearn Ct.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Directions: http://www.nokiatheatrelalive.com/parking.php

Los Angeles Convention Center
1201 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, California 90015
Directions: http://www.lacclink.com/pages/shared/maps.aspx

Taken from the IE Blog:

A couple of weeks ago, we announced that an optional preview for the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation was coming in early December, and I’m happy to say that it is now available. Read Knowledge Base article 945007 for full details, along with links to the specific downloads for each operating system.

If you don’t recall, in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas Technologies inc, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer.

This change will require no modifications to existing web pages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages. We are simply reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require “click to activate” will no longer require the control to be activated. They’ll just work.

The preview we are shipping today will not be widely distributed to users unless they download and install it. This preview is for customers to test this upcoming behavior before it is widely distributed in the April 2008 Internet Explorer Cumulative Update where all customers who install the update will get the change.

DOWNLOAD:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945007

Note:  The IE Automatic Component Activation technology is already included in the upcoming OS service packs Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3.

Join us for this free 1-day Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007 (ILM) technical training.
This one-day instructor led course is based on a 4-day course Oxford teaches around ILM 2007.  It provides students with the knowledge and skills to aggregate information from a variety of data sources and apply business rules to the flow of data between them.

Audience
This course is primarily intended for the Systems Engineer who needs to manage identity information across a number of directories or databases, but also provides an essential foundation for all members of an Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007 implementation team. Students should have good experience in Windows 2000 and/or Windows 2003 Directory Services, a working knowledge of SQL Server, directories and general infrastructure.

Course Objectives
The goal of this course is to show the student how to:

• Install, backup and restore ILM
• Configure a meta-verse schema
• Create management agents for a number of external sources, including AD forest – in a basic configuration
• Configure management agents, including, connector filters, join rules and attribute flow for straightforward scenarios
• Configure and verify data flow
• Create rules extensions (rudiments)
• Understand the security implications of an ILM installation, and ensure a basic level of security
• View performance counters
• Work with Active Directory and AD/AM, including groups and Exchange enablement
• Manage passwords using WMI and web applications

LOCATION:
Microsoft Irvine OfficeTBC – Training Room
3 Park Plaza
Suite 1600 Irvine California 92614
United States

DATE/TIME:
Thursday, January 10, 2008 9:00 AM – Thursday, January 10, 2008 5:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Welcome Time: 8:30 AM

REGISTER:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032357616&Culture=en-US